Letras y Figuras
By Rodrigo V. Dela Peña Jr.
Their names are a kind of narrative
though imagined, the way history
unfolds
before the page.
Before the canvas the letters
shape the scenes—
fin de siècle
settings and measured gesturings.
*
JOSE FERCED
Y TEMPRADO, BALVINO MAURICIO…
Who is to say
the dead
tell no stories? In the afterlife
they long to be
and be remembered.
Who can tell if the dead make
up lies?
*
T is a man
with a sugarcane upon his shoulders,
C a languid mother
carrying a baby.
To be burdened
by one thing
or another, a lifetime's
occupation—
the loop of P a weathered face, wrinkled
as dry earth.
*
Out of this silence:
cockcrow,
gossipy chatter, gossamer music
stirring the air.
If you listen closely, you will hear
secret
conversations.
*
Letter
by ornate letter,
the wor(l)d is represented.
*
How to describe without
description, how to paint a portrait
without
the subject's image. There is
something to be gleaned from this: the real
resists
to be
represented.
*
Interspersed
between figures, between letters
are vines and shrubs,
sprawling
tropical flora. And in all
this labored realism,
the obsessive attention
to detail,
the letters themselves
appear almost incidental.
*
Almost. Their names are still out-
lined,
epitaphs
of the upper class:
WILLIAM P. PIERCE, FRANCISCO
GARCIA ORTIZ.
They know how
the equatorial heat and monsoon rains
afflict us with
amnesia.
*
And now this fate more than
a century hence:
to be housed
in a museum or private
collection;
to be recognized
extant, time's only surviving
form. Let this
fiction of a past
be memory.
+++++++++
(Note: "Letras y Figuras," which literally means letters and figures, was a popular art form in the Philippines from the late 19th to the early 20th centuries. Rendered using watercolor on brown paper, it depicts tableaus of ordinary Filipino scenes, with letters of the patron's name cleverly formed to mimic human figures engaged in various activities.)
No comments:
Post a Comment